A behind the scenes look at film and television Prop making peppered with everything else creative we do!

When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIREsoftware, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Friday, 17 July 2015

Welcome to Westjet!

Well a generic version of a similar plane....................
This job is for a print campaign. I don't have any idea of what the final image will be used for, but I don't really need to know either! I was sent a PDF sketch, and we'll basically build everything in the sketch, plus a little bit more for safety. That way they have a small amount of room to move the camera, depending on how they lens it.

Our client needed a small section of jetliner interior. The image will be a tight shot of a person looking out the window.
I did a google image search of airplane interiors, and downloaded a ton of reference material, including some 3d cad renderings.
Very little of this build will be full on 3d cnc machining, but more just flat cut elements.

In order to make sure we were all on the same page, I 3d modeled what I thought we should be building, based off of some back and forth phone calls. With approvals signed off, I set to work exploding out the 3d computer model into flat panels for cutting on our Techno cnc.

And after a while of working the file, I was able to layout all of the pieces in 2d. The biggest pain was the curved wall, making sure that everything was going to work together, after it was flat cut, and wrapped into the curved shape. As you can imagine, it was more difficult than I first anticipated! Especially because the curved wall is made up of a few different laminated layers, that all have to work together, especially the actual window bezel, which will be 3d machined.

The window bezel was brought to life in 3d through Aspire alone. The vectors were created in Corel, as was the whole 2d portion of things, but Aspire was the fastest way to get from 2d to actual 3d geometry!

The bezel has a dropped lip on it, and this will become the edge that we'll use to fasten it to the curved wall section. We only need 3 windows for our plane section.

The actual bezel I cut from 3/4" mdf. An inexpensive material, with just the right thickness! All 3 only took about 25 minutes to cut with a 1/4" ballnose cutter.

Due to the relatively thin side profile, I also cut a flat plate from 1/2" MDF. This will get fastened to the back of each window to beef it up. This plate also has a rabbet cut into it, allowing us to slip in the window shade. It won't be the full shade, just what you would see from the inside, with it in the upright position.

The only other 3d-carved portion of this build was the seatback, and upright tray table. These I actually drew in Hexagon, and brought into Aspire. Only because I had drawn them for the approval render, although they would have been pretty quick to model in Aspire alone!

No headrest tv's on our bargain basement flight booking!

With all the carving complete on the 3d side of things, we sprayed the MDF parts wth 3 coats of a sanding sealer, then 2 coats of a high build primer. These will get a slight texture coat sprayed on them, but I wanted the base finish to be the best it could be, before the texture!
8)
JWO

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About Me

Jamie is the owner of Oxenham Design, a full service props and miniatures company. Jamie designs/ builds for the film, television and advertising industry, as well as creates highly creative 'over the top' dimensional signage.
Running the company for over 10 years with his wife and partner Jody, they are fortunate to work on exciting and creative projects.
For more information you can find Jamie on Facebook, visit the website www.oxenhamdesign.com or follow his blog.